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Serena Williams, the U.S. tennis icon was at the Women's FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium in London to watch Chelsea beat Manchester United 3-0, Chelsea took the Treble after also winning the WSL season and the Women's League Cup without losing a single game. Williams was in attendance because her husband, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, bought a £20m minority stake of between 8% and 10% in Chelsea's womens team.
Ohanian has become the latest U.S investor to celebrate success on the sporting field. Liverpool has won the Premier League for the twentieth time in the club's history and the second time under the ownership of U.S billionaire John Henry's Fenway Sports Group.
More surprisingly, Crystal Palace beat heavy favourites Manchester City in the FA Cup final to win a trophy for the first time since the club was founded in 1861. As a result, next season Crystal Palace will play in Europe for the first time ever. 'The Eagles' are part-owned by Josh Harris, co-founder of alternatives manager Apollo Global Management; David Blitzer, chairman of the tactical opportunities group at private equity giant Blackstone; and U.S. tech entrepreneur John Textor.
At JPMorganChase's investor day on 19 May 2025, Mary Callahan Erdoes, chief executive of asset & wealth management, used sports to illustrate how the "whole firm comes together."
Sports used to be an individual investment, so around 60% of the major sports team owners are private banking clients at JPMorganChase. The bank has been serving them for many years, but as the sports business has grown, it has been helping them think about how to handle that scale.
Erdoes asked: "How do you lend into that size, both for monetizing the investments you have so your family members can get some money, as well as getting new clients who can afford these new teams ?"
She said Brian Kantarian, head of the private bank sports finance group, helped create what has become the largest sports lending business in that segment.
"10 of the last 15 major sports transactions that have happened in the world have been financed by JP Morgan," Erdoes added.
The bank then moved to institutional buyers who wanted to invest in this exciting asset class, although some US leagues did not allow sovereign wealth funds to buy stakes in teams. JP Morgan advised on the first sovereign wealth fund entering into one of the big four leagues, which was from the Middle East, according to Erdoes.
JPMorgan then gave some clients access to private equity firms that launched sports funds. Erdoes said: "We then realized that the whole sports financing world needed institutionalization, and so the stadiums became a very big deal."
Therefore, the group combined investment bank's municipal finance expertise and the commercial bank's real estate expertise. Erdoes said Zach Effron, head of sports & entertainment infrastructure group, oversees what has become the largest practice.
She added: "In fact, 65% of the major financing developments have come through that team. You pull all of that together and you make the magic."
In addition, she argued that sports teams are valued based on media and JPMorgan's investment bank has the number one media practice. As a result, she said the firm landed and finished the largest completion of a sports franchise in history, which she believes will change the way sports are being dealt with.
"It is just as important that the whole flywheel of people don't sit there and count who gets credit for what across all of the different lines of business," she said. "We do not tolerate that here at JPMorgan."
However, it has to be borne in mind that there is no guarantee that financing success will bring success on the field. And the latter is what matters most to fans.